


Shibuya Station

by quick



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - The World Ends With You, Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You References
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-28
Updated: 2020-08-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26156383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quick/pseuds/quick
Summary: Danganronpa x The World Ends With YouWhen he wakes up, he's sitting on the train. His head stuffed with cotton, two pins in one pocket, and his phone in the other. A new email glows on the screen. Reach 104. You have sixty minutes. Fail, and face erasure. -The Reapers. (AU)
Kudos: 5





	Shibuya Station

**Author's Note:**

> Something new.  
> I tried to be as accurate as I could be to both games, but some things were adjusted for both believability's sake and my own lack of personal experience with Shibuya.  
> This story mainly deals with Danganronpa characters in the setting of The World Ends With You; I won't be using any of TWEWY's characters outside of being referenced to. Enjoy.

**[Week 1 Day 1]**

The first thing he hears is a loud, electronic melody.  
  
The wakeup process isn’t abrupt; he doesn’t immediately jolt awake. It’s slower. More subtle. A small, discordant tune floats through the buzz saw static flooding his mind. Slowly, it flows through his hypothalamus, tugging gently at his conscious. His eyes start to flutter. The noise starts to filter in. He feels his weight; his arms, his legs. They’re sore—he must not have slept in a good position—and protest his slow, steady return to reality. Not to be deterred, his mind presses onward, dragging his consciousness out of his deep, murky dream.  
  
That melody and a harsh light greets his entry into the waking realm. He groans, wonders _‘Did I leave the light on last night? Or did I leave my blinds open?’_ and cracks his eyes open.  
  
An empty subway car greets him back.  
  
His brain kicks into overdrive. All remnants of fatigue evaporate from his body, and he looks around.  
  
He tries, anyway.  
  
“Ow,” His stiff neck almost angrily screams its distaste for the sudden motion. He gingerly rubs at the tense muscles, pushing and stretching the stress out. Then, he tries again. His eyes scan the entire subway car, squinting past the subway light and taking note of every empty vinyl seat. Of the vast stretching into the skies outside. As he looks and drinks in every detail, there’s only one question that fills his mind.  
  
“…Where the hell am I?”  
  
With one hand gripping a subway pole, he hoists himself onto his feet. He almost lets go, but a sudden, harsh wave of nausea convinces him otherwise. As he clutches as his temples, a harsh crackle fills the air and a disembodied male voice indirectly answers his question.  
  
_‘We will now be arriving at Shibuya Station in five minutes,’_ the voice says politely, muffled through the static of a bad microphone.  
  
_‘Shibuya?’_  
  
He looks at the subway window, his translucent reflection frowning deeply. _‘When did I get on a train to Shibuya? When did I even fall asleep? Where is everyone?’_ He folded his hands together, trying to will some answer forward. Nothing came.  
  
His pocket buzzes.  
  
He pulls out his phone, eyes wide with surprise as he turns it on.  
  
_1 new text message.  
  
_He reads the notification twice. A weird, trickling sense of dread eats at him. Something wasn’t right. He looks up, giving a perfunctory glance around the still-empty subway car as if someone (a monochrome bear?) would materialize out of thin air and provide an explanation for him. Nothing.  
  
Looking back down, he unlocks his phone with a code he doesn’t remember knowing, swipes to the texting app, and opens it. He glances at the contact—a random mess of numbers that he doesn’t recognize—before he reads the text message.  
  
He needs to read it twice more before the message sinks in.  
  
**Reach 104. You have 60 minutes. Fail, and face erasure. -The Reapers.  
  
**The subway tune plays again, followed by that same, polite young voice. _‘We have now arrived at Shibuya Station. Please exit the train, Hajime Hinata._ ’

**[Week 1 Day 1]**

He steps out onto the scramble crossing, head pulsing. Why was he in Shibuya? How did he end up on the subway? Who were the Reapers? What did they mean by _erasure?_ There were so many questions and not enough answers. His head starts to pound. _‘Take a deep breath’_ he told himself. _‘Relax.’_  
  
He exhales and collapses onto a bench, leaning back on the cream slats. _‘What’s happening?’_ He wonders, burning his gaze into his marked palm as if the timer engraved into his skin could answer his questions. In response, it ticked down a few more seconds.  
  
**_54:32  
  
_**He looks up at the 104 building, the large red numbers standing out against the clear blue sky. ‘ _At least it looked as cool as the pictures made it out to be.’_ He thought, before shaking his head. _‘Stuck in Shibuya with no idea why, and you admire the sights. Fantastic use of your priorities, Hinata.’_  
  
Shaking the thoughts from his mind, he squints at the 104 logo, studying it intently. The text message from those Reapers had told him to come here, but why? It was… normal, as far as he could tell. There was nothing even remotely strange about the building, “Why did that text tell me to come _here_ of all places?” He wondered aloud.  
  
A loud silence, answered him back. Blanketed him, almost mockingly, as he returned to burning 104’s bright red logo into his mind. With any luck, he would get answers from these mysterious Reapers when he actually reached the building, instead of just staring at it from the other side of the scramble crossing.  
  
His mind begins to wander to the other unanswered questions floating in his mind. Had he run away, last night? That seemed like the most reasonable explanation for why he found himself on a train straight for Shibuya first thing in the morning. _‘No, no, that wouldn’t make sense,’_ He thought, _‘I wouldn’t know where I was going, if that was the case. This text message means that I came to Shibuya on purpose.’_  
  
There was a reason he was here. The text message and that empty subway car meant there wasn’t any other option. _‘But why?’_  
  
_That_ was the million-dollar question. Too bad there was no million-dollar answer.  
  
Ugh.  
  
His hand wanders to his pocket, probing for his phone; he wanted to check that text message again. Scour it for any sort of clue, potentially hidden deep in wordplay. Instead, his fingers brush against two smooth, cold objects.  
  
_‘Huh?’_  
  
Pulling his hand free, he stares at the foreign objects burrowed deep in his pockets. Button pins—the kind that people collected and stuck on clothing, with an endless variety of designs—and, judging by the feel of the metal in his hands, expensive ones at that. Button pins that he _knew_ he didn’t have in his pockets the night before. He feels his heart lurch with excitement, _‘Could they be a clue of some kind?_ ’, and he turns his analytical eye to the pins. The first one seemed normal enough: a dark blue pin with a white cross, a broken ring half the size of the cross circling it.  
  
It was the second one that unnerved him.  
  
It was coloured a dark, dark black, with a strange white decal on it. The decal, an ornate skull-like design, seemed to _glare_ at him. As if it was angry at him for existing.  
  
_‘No.’  
_  
No… that wasn’t quite right. It was angry at life. At _everything_. He was just collateral in the pin’s fury and anger-  
  
He shook his head incredulously. “What am I even thinking? It’s a _pin_. Pins don’t have emotions.”  
  
As he rubs his thumb against the glossy finish, his head explodes.  
  
“ _ARGH!_ ” a white-hot pain blossoms between his ears. He clutches at his skull as it pulsates, trying to stifle the sear that burned through his neural pathways. His brain smoulders and his eyes squeeze shut.  
  
As he writhes and moans in agony, the throbbing transforms. The bright, white-hot flashes morphs into a static buzz. Information feeds through his ears—noises. Noises that inflected and warbled, of all shapes, sizes and emotions. Familiar noises. _‘Voices?’_  
  
He fights through the pain, priming his ears. He concentrates, brow furrowing deeply enough to form wrinkles. They were definitely voices. Hundreds—no, maybe even _thousands_ of them, unfamiliar intonations all filtering into his brain at once. _‘Are they the voices of everyone around me?’_ He wonders, wrenching his eyes open to the world.  
  
A blue-washed Shibuya welcomes his return.  
  
_…  
  
‘What.’_  
  
He blinks. Twice. Rubs his eyes. Does it again. No matter what he tries, the world remains a monochrome blue. Sort of. Light blue boxes broke the monotony of the dark landscape, floating above humanoid blue shapes. _‘The voices,’_ He realized with a stumbling sort of clarity. The pounding in his head lightens slightly as individual voices attach to each box. Eventually, the pain disappears entirely, leaving only a sense of bewilderment behind. He stares, unblinking.  
  
_‘What. The. Fuck.’_  
  
He marvels in terror as the blue hues seemed to stretch endlessly—a vast expanse beyond the visible horizon.  
  
And then, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. A blink and all traces of the blue-washed world disappears, leaving only reality behind.  
  
_‘What the hell was that?’_ His gaze slides down to the black pin in his hand, a vague memory of his thumb brushing against the pin right before a spike of pain slammed through his skull. _‘Did the pin do that?’_ He bit his lip, hesitantly inching his finger towards the pin’s glossy face.  
  
He was interrupted before he could test his theory.  
  
“Ribbit.”  
  
He looks up. _‘Huh?’_  
  
“Ribbit.”  
  
“Ribbit.”  
  
“Ribbit.”  
  
_‘Behind me?’_  
  
He whirls around to face a facsimile. It was _kind_ of a frog—the same way that an Escher painting _kind_ of resembled reality. The shape was there, yes, with the protruding eyes, bent forelegs and rounded, green shape, but that was where the similarities ended. Unnatural black markings scored its back in a strangely elegant, heart-shaped pattern. It’s hind legs…  
  
Well, the frogs were currently wrestling themselves free. Their hind legs were trapped, held in the maw of something… indescribable, yet malicious; a black symbol, unlike anything he’d ever seen before, spitting them out like a bad meal. He couldn’t even _begin_ to figure out what it looked like. _‘Monstrous’,_ his mind whispers, eyes wide at the hideous sight.  
  
With one final squirm, the frogs pulled themselves free and landed on the concrete, ten meters away. Their hind legs were strange: unnaturally large and grotesque, a blood red with sharp talons. They almost seemed pasted on, as if its hind legs were a crude drawing glued onto its back.  
  
He tries desperately to bury those thoughts.  
  
The frogs were staring at him now. Three pairs of bulbous yellow eyes stared right through him, leering expressions on each face. He thought vaguely of nature documentaries; of prey, scoped and cornered by predators. A deer in the headlights.  
  
He takes a small step back, head turning sideways to look behind him. More of those floating, black symbols were starting to materialize, coalescing into existence behind him. There would be more; If he stayed there any longer, he’d be trapped.  
  
The frogs all inch closer. He chuckles nervously, hands held up. “Whoa, there…”  
  
The nearest faux amphibian lunged _._  
  
Only sheer reflexes saved him from the frog’s warpath as he throws his body clear of its trajectory. Even then it was barely enough—he felt a rush of air uncomfortably close to his body—as he threw himself out of harm’s way, landing awkwardly off balance.  
  
**_CRASH!_**  
  
The frog landed hard on the asphalt. No, it _crushed_ the asphalt underneath its weight, small bits of rubble sent flying from the impact zone.  
  
_‘Oh, crap!’_  
  
It's the debris that smacks him out of his stupor—small pokes against his skin that make him spring to life. He turns and _sprints_ , faster than he’s ever run in his life. Dimly, he realizes that he’s running away from the 104 building, but that realization is buried underneath his self-preservation. He isn’t even sure if the frogs are following him, he doesn’t falter in the slightest.  
  
_‘Keep running keep running keep running keep running,’_ He repeats it like a mantra, ignoring the fire in his lungs and the screaming in his muscles as he races through Shibuya, passing through district after district.  
  
His heart thrums in his chest, like hummingbird wings. His lungs feel like they’ll pop at any moment, but one look behind him—at the horde of frogs chasing him ravenously—and he forces himself to keep running.  
  
_‘Keep running.’_  
  
He ducks around a corner, down an alleyway, and into another street.  
  
_‘Keep running.’_  
  
Was he in another district? He couldn’t even tell where he was anymore.  
  
_‘Keep running.’_  
  
He wasn’t sure how long he could keep going.  
  
_‘Keep run-‘_  
  
“Hey!”  
_  
‘What the hell?’_ For some reason, he complies. He skids to a stop on the pavement, head darting back and forth. _‘Who said that?’_  
  
“Hey, you! Antenna!” He turns around to face the voice behind him.  
  
The first thing he notices is the boy’s manic eyes. Even with all the other odd details that amalgamated to create him, it was his eyes that drew Hajime’s attention. Wide, deep pools of olive that somehow seemed… malicious. Hopeless. You could _see_ the madness dancing in his eyes—you’d have a hard time noticing anything else—even if you couldn’t quite place _what_ it was. The boy’s shock of white hair, green jacket and heavy belt chain all came secondary to the insanity in his irises.  
  
Of course, he didn’t put that together in the five seconds of eye contact with him. He was still flummoxed by his confusing words. “Me?”  
  
“Yes, you!” The boy shouts. He extends his hand towards Hajime, eyes wide. “Quick, forge a pact with me!”  
  
_‘What?’_ “What?!”  
  
“Forge a pact! Or do you want to get murdered by a bunch of frogs?!”  
  
He turned to look back at where he came from, spotting a stampede of creatures. _‘Oh, right, those things are still behind me.’_  
  
He turns back, sweat beads tickling his forehead as they slid down his brow. “Uh, okay! Okay! How do I forge a pact?”  
  
“Just grab my hand and say you accept! Hurry!”  
  
“Alright! I accept!”  
  
The boy grabs Hajime’s hand.  
  
The world went white.

**[Week 1 Day 1]**

  
Somewhere in Shibuya sits a girl. Her black hair is cut short, her silver-eyed gaze sharp enough to cut through steel. A half-eaten bowl of tonkatsu sits on the restaurant table, and she idly plays with a piece, her concentration focused on the phone in her hand—more specifically, the tinny voice filtering through the speakers.  
  
_“…”_  
  
“Yes, the Game is now underway… But we’ve only erased fifteen Players, so far. There may be a lot of people on the final day.”  
  
_“..!”_  
  
“That… Okay. Alright. Was there anything else?”  
  
_“…”_  
  
“Th-thank you. See you soon.”  
  
She tries not to let her heart soar once the call drops—she was trained better than that, after all. What she _does_ do is take a piece of tonkatsu and scarf it down a little faster than usual, the corners of her mouth quirked upwards. The other girl at the table—a blonde, with an extraordinarily bright smile—claps her hands. “I take it the conversation went well?”  
  
Mukuro Ikusaba tries not to blush. She almost succeeds. Almost. “Yes. The Composer was… very pleased, that we’ve erased fifteen players. I thought they would be livid that it was only five, but they seemed to be in a good mood-“ She leaps out of her skin as the other girl leaps into the air.  
  
“YAHOO!” She shouts, fist pumped. “That is hella fine!”  
  
Mukuro blinks, trying not to sweat at the glares that she could feel from all parts of the shop. “I’m glad to hear that the Composer is enjoying my work, so far. It has been enjoyable to the max!”  
  
“Sonia, please sit down.”  
  
The girl, Sonia Nevermind, complies. “Ah, my apologies. I can be a bit… rowdy, at times,” Mukuro chuckles.  
  
“I know, it’s alright. In any case, I take it that things have been going smoothly, in terms of setting up the Game?”  
  
Sonia nods quickly, “Yes, indeed! I’ve already come up with challenges for the next two days and set up our Harriers to ensure maximum contact between them and the players! I will be brainstorming for the other two days, you can count on that!”  
  
_‘As well-prepared as ever, I see,’_ She thinks, nodding in approval. “You’ve taken well to Game Master, Sonia. I’m glad that I gave you the position.”  
  
“And _I’m_ glad that you thought that I would be the best fit for the role, rather than… say, Kuzuryu-san,” Sonia takes a long sip of her tea. When she sets the cup down, her eyes have taken on a different edge to them—like she was someone else entirely. Someone… ruthless. If Mukuro were anyone else, she’d shiver. “He’s too hot-headed for his own good. And he thought that _he_ would be the best Game Master? I scoff at that.”  
  
Mukuro held up a hand. “Sonia, you shouldn’t say that about your fellow Reapers. Remember…” She takes a bite out of another piece of tonkatsu, and her eyes glint dangerously in the dark interior of the restaurant. “I _am_ still the Conductor. I will see to it that this Game runs as smoothly as possible. I will not have two Reapers— _especially_ a Game Master—squabble pettily. Do you understand?”  
  
The tension was thick enough to be cut with a knife. Mukuro stares down the blonde at the other side of the table, and Sonia laughs nervously, her earlier bravado lost. “E-er, right. Yes. Apologies, again. I think that this new opportunity has…changed my attitude, an infinitesimal amount. I will seek to rectify my mistake.”  
  
Mukuro chuckles again and the tension disappears instantly. “As long as it doesn’t happen again.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
The earlier peace resumed, Mukuro eats at another piece of tonkatsu, staring patiently at her blackened phone screen. Thankfully, it’s not too long before a text message appears.  
  
**Meet me at WildKat.**  
  
She looks up to meet Sonia’s glimmering eyes. “It’s the Composer. She wants to see me,” She says, the flutter in her heart returning. Sonia squeals.  
  
“Do not let me keep you waiting! Ah, although… You must join me for a toast! Waiter!?” A well-dressed, timid young boy walks up to them, a nervous smile on his face. _Ryouta_ , read his nametag.  
  
“Y-yes?” He stutters.  
  
“I must get another cup, and another pitcher of tea. Sencha, please.”  
  
“O-of course. I’ll be back shortly,” With a flourish, he strides away, leaving behind a sighing blonde and fidgety Conductor. Mukuro stands up.  
  
“I shouldn’t keep the Composer waiting, Sonia. Really, I should go-“  
  
“Nonsense! I’m certain that the Composer won’t mind if you’re a few minutes late. Especially if you tell her that a Novoselican royal asked you to stay for tea! Come! Sit,” And the way she says it makes it feel like an implicit command, despite her inferiority.  
  
_‘A princess_ is _a princess, even if the region doesn’t exist anymore.’  
  
_Nonetheless, she agrees anyway, taking her seat once more as she waits for the waiter to return, a surprisingly quick affair.  
  
“Your tea,” He says, placing the pitcher, a china cup, and a saucer in front of Mukuro. “I-is there anything else I can help you two with?”  
  
“No, that’ll be all,” Sonia says and waves him away, a command he is all too willing to follow. She turns to pour the tea for Mukuro, not a single droplet splashing out of the cup. Mukuro takes the cup, fingers tentatively gripping the fragile thin handle. Sonia folds her fingers together, smiling widely. “So…”  
  
“So..?”  
  
“You simply _must_ tell me what the Composer is like! I’ve never met her, but she sounds so… brilliant! Beautiful! Bombastic!”  
  
Mukuro awkwardly looks away. “Ah, uh, yeah. She is. I… she’s amazing.”  
  
“Indeed!” Sonia exclaims. “Hella amazing! I simply do _not_ understand why she chooses to remain so elusive. Doesn’t she want to _inspire_ her legions of Reapers?”  
  
“She does,” Mukuro says softly, “I can’t really explain to you why she chooses to act the way she does, but she certainly has all of us in the forefront of her mind.”  
  
“And what a wonderful boss she is for doing so,” Sonia sighs dreamily.  
  
“Yes,” Mukuro says awkwardly. “Sonia, I really have to go—I can’t keep the Composer waiting this long,” Sonia, understandably, looks abashed.  
  
“Ah, of course. My apologies, again. That rowdiness, I swear…” She murmurs, before shaking her head. “Shall we at least toast, before you go?”  
  
“A toast?”  
  
“Of course! No teatime is complete without a toast!”  
  
Again, it feels like a command, compelling her to agree. She almost feels bad that she has to leave at all, but the Composer was always her first priority. “Fine. A toast.”  
  
Sonia trills, refilling her own cup before lifting it high into the air. “A toast! To our benevolent leader!” She declares. Mukuro follows along half-heartedly.  
  
“To our leader.”  
  
“To Junko Enoshima!”  
  
“To the Composer.”  
  
The drink goes down like hellfire.

**[Week 1 Day 1]**

The last frog turns to dust before his wide eyes. Ashen pieces blow away in the wind, leaving nothing behind except a frazzled, brown-haired teenager and his nonchalant, white-haired cohort.  
  
**_Noise erased._**  
  
“What the hell.” He murmurs, staring blankly at the dark blue pin he had found in his pocket from earlier. He could feel the power emitting from it—the one that allowed him to shake the entire street and hurt, even _kill_ a few of the monsters. Power that wasn’t there; not until he met the white-haired kid on the street and made a… pact?  
  
He slips the pin into his pocket before turning to look at his… partner. The white-haired kid was standing a few feet away, wiping his brow and staring up at the dissipating cloud of ash. _‘Who the hell is this guy?’_  
  
The other boy turns around, wide smile on his face. “Well done, Antenna! We managed to get rid of all the Noise.”  
  
“Noise?”  
  
White-hair frowns. “Yeah. Those monsters. They’re called Noise—no, I don’t know why, don’t ask me that. Anyway!” He stretches his arms behind his head, “You’re pretty lucky that I found you before they got you y’know? You could’ve been erased!”  
  
Erased.  
  
He didn’t need to be a genius to know what that meant. The text message already spelt it out for him perfectly.  
  
_'Fail, and face erasure.'_  
  
“Why were they chasing me?”  
  
White-hair squints at him. “You’re a Player, Antenna. You didn’t have a Pact. Honestly, I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did without them finding you. Don’t you remember what the Reapers told us at the start?”  
  
_‘The Reapers?’_  
  
He shakes his head, “I don’t remember anything about Reapers or Players or Noise or whatever.” White-hair’s eyes narrow even further, head twisting like a curious animal. _‘He’s studying me.’  
  
_Eventually, though, his expression changes. His manic eyes widen, eyebrows raised high. The corners of his mouth stretch into a wide, bright grin, from ear to ear. It trembles, like he was struggling not to laugh.  
  
Hajime felt an urge to punch him.  
  
White-hair asks, “You really don’t know what this is, huh?”  
  
“Not a clue.”  
  
That same self-satisfaction twisting his features, White-hair folds his arms. He steps backwards in long, brisk strides, tilting his head towards the opposite side of the street, “C’mon.”  
  
Without a good reason to refuse, he complies. They set off, down long, twisting roads and through bustling streets, weaving through pedestrians and parked cars, over bridges and under tunnels. All the while, the world was eerily quiet. Muted, somehow, as if everything was filtered through large, woollen earmuffs. Not for the first time, he felt something very _off._  
  
“What the hell is happening? Where are we?”  
  
White-hair looks back, the same annoying look on his face that made Hajime want to punch him. “Well, you’d let me explain, Antenna-“  
  
“It’s Hajime,” He growls. “Hajime Hinata.”  
  
“Hinata!” He decides, twirling in place. Hajime scowls, “So, Hinata. You really don’t remember anything, huh?”  
  
“I thought we already established that,” He replies, stuffing his thumbs into his pocket and gripping the denim tightly.  
  
“Well, then, allow me to be the first person to say…”  
  
A train roars, hurtling by on a bridge overhead, “Welcome to the Underground.”  
  
Too much silence passes. “The… Underground?”  
  
White-hair nods, “Some sort of alternate reality, just below the Realground of Shibuya. Don’t ask, I don’t know either.”  
  
“Okay. Okay,” Hajime says, though everything is anything but. “So, the Underground. With those weird monster things-”  
  
“Noise.”  
  
“Noise. They attack us, the Players, to stop us from completing the Challenges.”  
  
“Challenges?”  
  
“Yeah. Aren’t you paying attention?” White-hair chides, pulling out an old flip phone and turning it on. He flips it to face Hajime, a text message lighting up the cracked screen. The exact same text that he got on the subway. “Challenges. We have to finish them every day for a week to keep playing. Don’t get erased, all that.”  
  
“Right. Challenges, okay,” He piles it on top of the list of things he has to keep track of. “Hold on, we can get erased?”  
  
“Yep! Just don’t be stupid, and I’ll make sure you won’t get erased, alright?”  
  
_‘Ah yes, a random kid I’ve never met before._ Extremely _trustworthy, ’_ He rolled his eyes. “I’m honoured.”  
  
“Good. Anything else you want to know, Antenna?”  
  
Annoyance aside, it surprised him to discover that, _‘No, I actually don’t.’_ Through some sort of sheer luck, the boy had managed to answer all his old questions. _‘The Reaper’s Game, huh?’_ He stares back down at his marked palm, a strange serenity found in the ticking numbers.  
  
**_26:39_**  
  
He looks back up at the boy, gears turning. With new information, new questions arise. They bubble, slowly floating to the surface. For one… “What’s your name?”  
  
White-hair blinks owlishly. “My name?” He repeats.  
  
“Would you rather me call you White-hair for the rest of the week?”  
  
His eye twitches, and he rubs at his temple. _‘Evidently not_. _’_  
  
“It’s Nagito. Nagito Komaeda.”  
  
There’s a subtle change to Nagito, then and there. It’s so subtle that Hajime almost misses it, hidden underneath the weight of Nagito’s jacket and chain. His shoulders set—before they were loose and lopsided, now they’re rigid and affixed in place. His back slouches a little, released from the strain of holding his posture straight. Something about Nagito’s demeanour itself changes, but whether it was for the better, he couldn’t say.  
  
_‘Hopefully the better,’_ Hajime decides to switch tracks, onto another question that unfurled itself.  
  
“What are we playing for?”  
  
Nagito stops walking, so quickly that it’s like he turns into a statue. Hajime almost walks into him. He manages to catch himself just in time, stopping three paces away. With an odd look on his face, Nagito turns to him.  
  
“You really don’t remember anything?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
Nagito’s mouth open. Then, it closes. Like a fish, he repeats the motion a few more times, before sighing heavily. He rubs at his temple again, as if it could solve whatever troubled him. Finally, he shakes his head. “Look, I don’t know how else to tell you this, but… we’re playing to be resurrected.”  
  
Nagito’s words sinks in slowly for him. Like a penny, slowly drifting to the bottom of the sea. He stares at the white-haired boy with a look of complete bewilderment, compounded with utter disbelief. Eventually though, it does sink.  
  
“Resurrection?”  
  
Nagito groans. “Yeah. Returning to life, reanimation, _whatever_ you wanna call it. I hate to tell you like this, Antenna, but we’re dead.”  
  
“D-dead?”  
  
“Yeah. You, me, every single Player in the Reaper’s Game. Hell, I’m pretty sure that some of the Reapers themselves were probably living humans at one point. Here?” He gave a cursory glance around him. “Not so much. It’s why we’re in the Underground. We’re six feet under, playing for a chance to get back up. You said you didn’t remember anything, right?”  
  
He nods numbly.  
  
Nagito looks off to the side. “We all pay a price. A fee, to get in. ‘The most important thing to you,’ is what they told me. It seems like your memories were the most important thing to you.”  
  
The second bombshell explodes at his core, leaving a pit at the bottom of his stomach. He sways a little but manages to stay strong enough to remain upright. “Right. Right. Okay.”  
  
Because what else could you say to the revelation that you were dead? And that the price for your life was your memories? Who you _were?_  
  
Nagito almost looked sympathetic as he approached, putting a hand on Hajime’s shoulder, “Look, Hinata. It’s hard to accept it right now. I get that. But we’ve gotta keep moving. See the timer?” he taps his palm, fingers pointed to the ticking numbers, “We need to get to 104. Before the time is up, and we get erased. Let’s focus on that, okay?”  
  
_‘Right. I can do that. I can think about it later.’_ He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, willing his heartbeat to slow to a normal speed. He opens his eyes again. “How far away is 104?”  
  
Nagito frowns. “Probably ten, fifteen minutes away? C’mon, we have to go if we want to make it in time.”  
  
Hajime nods, “Let’s go then,” he says, and they resume their walk.  
  
His body is still numb when they make it, twenty minutes later. Hajime gives a cursory glance at his palm, shuddering at how close the two of them had gotten to the deadline.  
  
As they approach the building, Nagito gives him a side-eyed glance. “Hinata?”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“I think we can win this. If we work together, we can win the Reaper’s Game and get revived. We can go back home and get our entrance fees back. Go back to a normal life. Do you think we can do it?”  
  
For some reason, He feels something combust within him. It's not an explosion—it's a tiny flame, maybe even just a spark, burning in the deepest recess of his brain. He grins a little, although he doesn't know why. “Yeah. Yeah, I think we can.”  
  
Nagito’s grin matches his own. Maybe even wider. Brighter.  
  
A little bit more sinister.  
  
“Then let’s win, partner,” He sticks his hand out. Hajime grabs it and shakes it hard.  
  
_‘A deal with the devil,’_ a traitorous part of his mind whispers to him as they step foot inside the 104 building.  
  
And then everything goes black.


End file.
